Month: September 2009

Days 10 and 11 of my grandmother’s 1936 trip to Europe, covering the time she spent in Scotland.  The combination of my grandmother’s handwriting being difficult, her spelling being frequently eccentric, and my own unfamiliarity with the proper nouns made these entries hard to transcribe.  I think I managed to figure out all the places she went.  I suspect that this is a problem that will persist for the rest of the journal.  (Previously: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2.)

Edinburgh
Friday, July 3 [1936]

At about 9 o’clock after the immigration officials O.K.ed our passports we were put on the tender and taken ashore to Greenock.  Here the custom inspectors went thru our luggage, and then we were allowed to start on our way by train to Glasgow where we transferred our luggage and ourselves to to a private bus (40 in our party).  Then we started on our ride to Edinburgh.  At 1:30 we stopped at Balloch Inn which is on Loch Lomond.  Here we had luncheon, which wasn’t very good and then took a boat ride all around the lake.  It was just lovely and is surrounded with rolling hills.  From here we continued by bus thru the Trossachs which is simply gorgeous country full of hills or what I would call mountains covered with bright green & greenish yellow grass and fern and dotted with grey spots of scraggly rock edges; and lovely delicate patches of heather which in spots made complete patches of orchid color.  And among all of this lovely color we could see spots of pure white which we found to be mountain goats, on closer inspection.  Our next stop was for just a few minutes to get a glimpse of Loch Katrine, which was a very quiet secluded spot surrounded by hills & woods.  From here we went quite fast thru many small villages and some very lovely country.  (As we had had only 3 hours of sleep last night & having been on the go continually since 6 this morning I slept during part of this.)  Our next stop was in Linlithgow where the Castle of Mary Queen of Scots is.  This is supposed to be the place she lived in during her reign.  From here we continued on to Edinburgh.  We were assigned to a small sized ball room for the night at least it seemed that way to us after our small cabin on the boat.  This evening Bert & I went for a walk along the business streets.  It was quite amusing to notice the unattractive window displays and to look at the prices of things and try to translate them into U.S. pricing.  I believe the people attracted our attention more than the other things because of their dress.  They seem to have no style to them.  Their clothes just hang and have no color or cut and their shoes just don’t fit.  We walked along for a while just looking at people’s feet & we could pick out every tourist just by shoes and stockings.  After this walk we went back & went to bed at about 11 o’clock and it was still broad day light.  The land of the midnight sun!

I get kind of a kick out of Doris’s reflections on style here.  In those sentences I can see a bit of the grandmother I actually knew, who devoted a lot of mental energy to issues of social propriety.  More information on the places she visited: Greenock, Glasgow, Balloch Inn (might be the same place, might not), Loch Lomond, the Trossachs, Loch Katrine, Linlithgow, Edinburgh.

Saturday, July 4th [1936]

We were up bright and early this morning and started on quite an extensive sight seeing tour at 9:30.  Our guide was quite a humorous fellow (English in no.) and his only worry was that we wouldn’t see all of Edinburgh before we left.  But I’m sure that didn’t happen because by the time we reached the train at 1:30 we were simply exhausted.

Our first stop on this train was the home of John Knox which was a very interesting place with very small rooms which had beautifully carved paneled walls and very low doors thru which we walked quite stooped.  This was done as a sort of defense measure for in the olden days they would stop the speed of the enemy.  We were told of the origin of burning the candle at both ends & of the saying dead as a door nail.  From here we went to Holyrood Palace, which was the palace of Mary Queen of Scots.  We were taken thru the private rooms once occupied by Queen Mary, the room of Charles Darnley thru the large banquet halls and thru the court rooms now used by the king when he is residing there.  The most interesting of these rooms was the presentations hall which is quite beautiful in its simplicity.  It is quite large with no chairs except a throne on a slightly raised platform & on the floor a beautiful oriental rug.  There are some beautiful oil paintings here of all the important royalty.  The most beautiful I think is a fairly new painting of the Present Queen Mary.  In front of the palace is a guard in kilts that patrols up and back in front of the entrance.  From here we went to St. Giles Cathedral which was the parish of John Knox.  It was quite a beautiful place with a very interesting history.  It has been the church of 4 different religions.  From here we were taken to the Supreme Court building where we saw a beautiful stained glass window depicting the king and all of the courtiers  We were very fortunate to find the courts were not in session this gave us an opportunity to see the barristers and advocates in their morning suits and long black robes and wigs.  We then were shown the center spot of Edinburgh which is marked by a large heart in the center of the street.  Our next stop was Edinburgh Castle which is on a high hill over looking Princess street which is said to be the most beautiful street in the world.  This castle was once a fortress but is now war memorial.  Where the chapel once was now stands a building dedicated to the dead war heroes.

Before going to the station we stopped at the park just below the castle and saw the large floral clock.  At 1:30 our train left for London where we arrived at 10 P.M. and went directly to the Kingsley hotel.  Bertha & I have a room (105) together just over looking the the city.  This was a very tiring day but a very happy one for us all.

There’s too much in here for me to go through and link to all of it.  There are some things that jumped out at me while reading that I want to note though.  Doris’s trip to the U.K. happened to fall during the less than one year reign of King Edward VIII, who ascended the throne on 21 January 1936 and would go on to abdicate it on December 10 so he could marry his American mistress, Wallis Simpson.  The “present Queen Mary” my grandmother admires a painting of seems likely to be the King’s mother, Mary Von Teck.  I was sure I was reading a “heart in the center of the street” wrong, but a search reveals that Edinburgh does in fact have a cobblestone heart near St. Giles Cathedral.

Picture from the RampantScotland website

The text at the website where I found the picture tells a fairly different story of the heart than the one my grandmother relates.  Rather than being the center of Edinburgh, it was the location of a building where tolls were collected and, later, prisoners executed.  It was apparently for a time customary for passersby to spit upon the heart.

Days 6 through 9 of my grandmother’s 1936 cruise.  Previously: Introduction, Part 1.

S.S Duchess of Atholl
Monday, June 29th [1936]

This is the first bad day we have had since we’ve been abroad.  The weather has been cold and foggy with quite a ghastly green choppy ocean.  No one looks particularly chipper today and many are slumped in their deck chairs looking rather pale and sad.  There were 150 people absent from dinner this evening but none of us were among this number.  We’ve gotten along grand all day and haven’t missed a meal.  I guess we can just take it.  This evening Charlotte won $13.50 in a keno game.  Movie “Every Nite At 8.” Then to bed after sandwiches upstairs.  Lost another hour.

Every Night at Eight is a 1935 movie in which three young women get fired from an industrial job and try to find success as a singing trio.

S.S. Duchess of Atholl
Tuesday, June 30th [1936]

Today was again very grey and cold although the water was so calm we almost felt as though the ship were standing still.  Wrote thank you letters for a while this morning and played bridge this afternoon.  This evening was the masquerade.  Very few people dressed up. We wore formals and felt very appropriately dressed.  We played bridge in the lounge and then took a few “turns” about the deck before going to bed. Set the clock back an hour again.

A bit of historical context here.  On the same day my grandmother was attending a masquerade on a ship, in the United States a book called Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell was hitting store shelves.

S.S. Duchess of Atholl
Wednesday, July 1 [1936]

For the first time since I’ve been aboard ship I slept till almost noon.  Gee!  It was a grand sensation for a change.  I wrote letters most of the morning.  I don’t think I’ll ever finish really.  Such is the life of a vacationist.  Late this afternoon we went and had some of our American money changed in to English money.  We sat for an hour with that money trying to figure out how much it equaled in our money.  I can see now where we’ll probably be jipt [sic] royally all over.  This evening we played keno and I won $4.  Then down to the movie to see the “Bengal Lancer” then a walk about the deck and so — “Good night”!  Set clock back again.

This entry has me thinking about my grandmother’s character and historical context in some new ways.  “Jipt” is clearly a corruption of “gypped,” meaning “cheated” and a corruption of “gypsy”.  My grandmother’s handwriting is difficult, and it took me a while to read this one.  When I managed it, I wondered about racism.  It isn’t obvious to me, given the spelling, that Doris knew the origin of the word she was using, but she surely would have been aware that “jew” is used by antisemites to mean the same thing.  Perhaps that would have made her less likely to express herself that way, had she realized?  Even if she wouldn’t have used that term the question of racism, and how much it was a part of my grandmother’s character in her 20s, remains.  The last set of entries seemed to indicate that she bought into stereotyped gender roles.  Perhaps her thoughts on race will come out once she gets to Europe.  (When I knew her, sixty years later, she never said or did anything that seemed overtly racist.  But a civil rights movement had happened in the interim.)

Regarding the issue of antisemitism, I find it necessary to continually remind myself when thinking about race and religion in this journal that these events are from a pre-holocaust world.  I’m not sure I have a strong understanding of what a Jewish identity is that doesn’t somehow have an echo of in-living-memory genocide.

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer was another 1935 movie.  Likely fitting right in with my seventy-five-years-later theme of racism, this one is about British soldiers on a frontier in India defending against ruthless natives.  The Wikipedia article about the movie claims that it may have been Adolf Hitler’s favorite movie, though other sources say that his favorite was King Kong.

S.S. Duchess of Atholl
Thursday, July 2nd [1936]

Today we spent most of our time frantically writing letters of thank you’s because we know that after we get off the boat tomorrow we’d never write them.  Late this afternoon there was a terrible fog.  It was so thick the boat was practically at a stand still and you couldn’t see more than 3 feet of water anywhere around the boat.  At about five o’clock we sighted land for the first time the bonnie hills of Scotland & hills of good old Ireland and believe me it was grand to see a good piece of terra-firma.  This eve before our farewell dinner we had cocktails with the Nicholson.  About seven o’clock we went on deck just as our boat was entering the Clyde river.  On both sides were the rolling hills of Scotland, the most majestic spectacle, with the sun sinking just behind and their color the most gorgeous shades of green, just velvety looking.  Along the coast were little fishing villages & scattered in the hills among the trees were occasional old castles.  It was about 12 o’clock before it actually got dark tonight and just now (2 A.M.) we could see a streak of day light behind the hills toward the west.  A beautiful night.  (Change our clocks I think for the last time.)

See the Wikipedia article on the River Clyde for lots of interesting pictures of what these views look like today.

The first five days of my grandmother’s 1936 cruise abroad.  I’m correcting minor spelling/writing errors, unless I think they are interesting.  (For background information, read the introduction.)

Michigan Central Train
June 24, ’36

After a glorious send off by the Froehlichs, Newmans and my folks we left the 12th street station at 10:30 A.M. on the Michigan Central railroad bound for Montreal.  Mr. Judson, representative of the Sanger tours, joined Joan, Bertha and me and we quickly found a drawing room where we spend the remainder of the day playing bridge and drinking.  At 4 o’clock Charlotte and Marie got on at Detroit and we had quite a hilarious evening; which ended about 10:30 when we all went to bed completely exhausted from the excitement of the day and the days before.

Sanger Tours, incidentally, seems to still exist.

Montreal Canada
June 25, ’36

We arrived in Montreal this morning at 1:00 and went to the Windsor Hotel where we registered for rooms and left our luggage.  Then down to the coffee shop for breakfast to which Mr. Judson again treated.  Then as all loyal members of our sex we remembered a bit of last minute shopping that we had to do; so we hiked ourselves off to the best stores in town among which as my old standby the V and X.  At eleven we started on a two and a half hour bus ride around the city which proved to be very interesting.  We went thru the campus of McGill University; thru the French and English sections of the town and thru the beautiful residential districts.  We stopped at the Notre Dame church, which is quite an old cathedral but very beautiful.  We then went thru the Shrine of Brother Andre which is a large church on the top of a hill.  It is still in the process of being built and when completed will be the highest point in the city.  This afternoon after a hurried lunch at “Childs” we took a horse & carriage ride up to the top of Mount Royal.  Before dinner we went to a cocktail party in Mr. Judson’s room.  Mr. & Mrs. Nicholson & Mr. Eagles and our gang were there.  This evening we spent very quietly in our room.

My grandmother’s old standby store, the V and X, was also called “the five and ten” or “the five and dime.”  It was a variety store where everything cost five or ten cents.  The “Shrine of Brother Andre” is now known as St. Josephs Oratory.

S.S. Duchess of Atholl
June 26, ’36

We were up at the crack of dawn (6:30) in order to get down to the boat and make our final arrangements.  Then Bert and I did some final shopping for crazy gifts for [Rory?] Judson.  The boat sailed at eleven thirty amidst quite a lot of excitement.  The five of us were nearly crazy we were so thrilled.  After sailing we went down and got our mail and opened the flowers some of the girls got.  We had cocktails with Mr. Judson, Mr. Buck & Mr. Nicholson & Miss Ray Fauss  up in 1st class lounge then luncheon which was quite hilarious.  In the afternoon we wrote letters and at 8 P.M. bid farewell to Ray & Mr. Buck then settled down to a quiet evening.

It is kind of illegible who the “crazy gifts” are for.  I’m guessing that Mr. Judson had a son named Rory.

S.S. Duchess of Atholl
Saturday, June 27, ’36

We were still in the St. Lawrence River.  The day has been beautiful and we were all up early and out in our deck chairs right after breakfast.  Our chairs are situated on the port side near the stern of the boat; right along side of the rail.  Behind us is a set up for “Quoits” and then a double row of chairs; then a deck Tennis court and the same set up of chairs on the other side.  At 11 the deck steward served bouillon and crackers then we relaxed and napped until luncheon at 1:30.  Again around the deck until Muster drill at 3:45 P.M.  It was just grand sitting and watching the deep blue water with an occasional view of the coast of the Province of Quebec.  At 5 o’clock there was Horse racing on the cabin deck at which I lost 50¢ and if I hadn’t had a bath at 5:30 probably would have lost more.  Dinner at 7:30 a nice English waiter with absolutely no sense of humor.  After dinner we went on deck to watch the sunset which was indescribable it was so gorgeous.  A keno game in the lounge at which Bert won $5.  Then down to the first class dinner room to see “Ruggles of Red Gap” and then to bed.

Lots of stuff in this one.  I wasn’t familiar with quoits, but it seems to be a ring tossing game similar to horseshoes.  The horse racing on the ship was done with wooden cutouts of horses, with their progress determined by rolling dice.  Ruggles of Red Gap was a 1935 film based on a bestselling novel by Harry Leon Wilson.  It was a comedy about an English valet who finds himself in the American west and has to assimilate.

S.S. Duchess of Atholl
Sunday, June 28th [1936]

At a slight tap on the door at 8:30 and with a very English accent Miss Battens our stewardess awakened us to another glorious day.  As soon as breakfast was over we went on deck where we were kept busy all morning watching the patches of snow and the lonely shrubbery on the coasts of Newfoundland on our right and Labrador on our left.  It is hardly possible to describe the gorgeous billowy clouds and the deep blue of the water that met our eyes as we passed thru the Straits of Belle Isle in to the beautiful Atlantic.  These straits are also called the path of ice bergs.  To the right and to the left we saw some dozen and a half bergs snow white and very majestic against the deep blue sky.  We passed one berg at a distance of 4 miles and were told that it was only about 1/12 above water.  I can’t put into words what a glorious sight an a thrill this all was.  At 12:45 P.M. we passed Belle Isle and entered the Atlantic.  As we sat in our deck chairs watching the calm blue water we just marveled at the tranquility of it all.

Luncheon at 1:30 and a quiet afternoon.  After dinner a concert in the lounge, then a stroll on the deck neath the Atlantic star stroon [sic] sky and then to bed.  The first bit of humor from an English officer was when Bert asked him how deep the water was and he answered “Oh ’tis not verry dip — only about three miles.”  Clock set back 1 hr.

From Wikipedia, the strait my grandmother sailed through.

Belle Isle is the unlabeled island just past the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

My parents recently reorganized their library, and while they were doing so they discovered my maternal grandmother’s diary from a trip abroad she took in 1936, at the age of 22.  I knew my grandmother as Doris Stein, but when she took this trip she was Doris C. Kaufmann.  She wrote as much in the front of the book.

Name: Doris C. Kaufmann
Home Address: 1131 E. 50th St. Chicago, IL
Starting Point: Montreal
Name of Ship: S. S. Duchess of Atholl
En route for: England, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland.

I’ve decided I’m going to transcribe the journal as I read it, and post it here.  It will, for me, be a fairly fascinating look into my family history, and I think it will more generally be an interesting glimpse into the high society of Chicago in the pre-World War II era.  My grandmother’s family was what my mother calls, “very comfortable.”  Her father, Charles Kaufmann, was the inventor of the telescoping camera and owner of Kaufmann and Fabrey, the largest commercial photography company in Chicago.  So for those thinking about authorial voice, this series will be the reflections of an upper class Jewish young woman heading out on her “grand tour” of Europe.

Before I start posting the contents, though, I want to talk a little about her journal as an artifact.  It’s a leather bound volume with an attached pencil. It was printed specifically to be a cruise diary, with color pages to identify not just the flags of foreign countries, but also the iconography of the various cruise lines of the day.

Flags of the world’s countries and cruise lines. (Click to enlarge.)

Tucked between the pages are clippings and other errata of her trip, including a postcard of her ship and a map of the world.

The Duchess of Atholl. (Click to enlarge)

World Map. (Click to enlarge)

Finally, sandwiching the primary portion of the book which has pages titled “My Trip — Day by Day,” there are pages for personal memoranda, the recording of addresses and ship’s logs, tables of exchange rates and international posting costs, and other such things.  My favorite bit of content from these pages relates to tipping.  There are several paragraphs printed in the “Information for Travelers” section about how tipping practice is a debated topic.  My grandmother seems to have sought advice on this subject from someone, perhaps her father, and written a table for her own reference showing how much money she plans to give to the various persons on the ship.

Tips on Board Ships. (click to enlarge)

Much more about this book to come.  I will try to provide historical context as I relate my grandmother’s experiences.  For example, I recall her telling me once that she was on a trip to Europe when the Spanish Civil War started.  This has to be that trip, so I will try to note what world events are going on as my grandmother jaunts about the Atlantic.